Why Triangulating Neoliberal Clintonites Back Big Business Over People

[Ferd Berfel]

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/gutless-democrats-fear-fights-why-triangulating-neoliberal-clintonites-back-big

Gutless Democrats Fear Fights: Why Triangulating Neoliberal Clintonites Back Big Business Over People

Progressives are right and Hillary Clinton is wrong on trade. So why do we run away from a winning hand?


As the Democratic primary heated up to the boiling point, one particular line of attack on Bernie Sanders had the distinctively Karl Rove-ian stench of attacking Sanders’ strength. Vox, Slate and AEI all bought the spin and struck the same theme: “If Bernie Sanders cares about poor people, how come he doesn’t want to trade with them?”

But even more than Rove, we can catch a distinctive whiff of Thatcherism here: There is no alternative; either we do trade on neoliberal terms or else we head back to caveman status. We can’t do things in a more equitable manner, we’re being told, even though history repeatedly shows that we can—replacing monarchy with democracy, abolishing slavery, getting rid of child labor, establishing equal rights for women. All these equalizing advances we’ve come to take for granted were unthinkable once: There was simply no alternative… or, again, so we were told.

Economist Dean Baker debunked the underlying argument on his “Beat the Press” blog as the attack on Sanders first appeared, and elaborated his critique more fully in a piece solicited by the Washington Post—which then declined to run it. Baker first noted that conventional economic theory calls for rich countries to run surpluses with developing countries—supplying the capital they need to develop—and that this pattern prevailed throughout most of the 1990s. “The United States had a modest trade deficit in these years, but Europe and Japan had large surpluses,” Baker recalled, but “This pattern was reversed in 1997 with the U.S.-I.M.F.’s bailout from the East Asian financial crisis.”

[Buzz Clik]

1. Oh, dear. Someone is angry.

[Faux pas]

2. Kickin'

[Orsino]

3. Uh, for money?

I didn't think this was complicated.

[tonyt53]

4. "Bernie's strength"?

What strength? He loses with the majority of Democrats over the age of 40. He loses with most minorities. He wins with those who are political novices and the very naive. In other words, he loses with the majority of Americans. People that live by those weekly polls are fools for the taking.

[immoderate]

5. What's good for General Motors is good for America!

--imm

[dreamnightwind]

6. That was an excellent read

Final 3 paragraphs:

As I’ve pointed out here recently [with more detail here], only a robust welfare state can effectively fight against systemic poverty, even in affluent countries. Which is all the more reason for developing countries to have them as well, as many millions of their citizens have long believed. This is the alternative that those attacking Sanders don’t want anyone to be thinking about. And it’s not just an idle thought. On several occasions, Sanders has cited the coups against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile as classic examples of mistaken U.S. foreign policy. Both these coups were mounted in part to destroy the threat of model welfare states being established in Latin America—something that was only a threat because people wanted it, and it could work. But to Sanders, that wasn’t a threat—it was an opportunity, an opportunity for whole countries to develop in a democratically self-determined manner, placing themselves on the same sort of path that countries like Denmark and Sweden have taken to virtually eliminate poverty.

Thus, there is a broad underlying consistency to Sanders’ vision—from expanding the welfare state to a collaborative foreign policy and fair trade policies—which combines to present a clear alternative to the tunnel-vision framework of those attacking him. Of course, you can say that Sanders is powerless to bring this alternative about. Even as president, he couldn’t do anything to promote welfare states in developing nations—or could he? He could certainly stop making it harder.

But above all, this is where Sanders’ call for a political revolution comes in. Because the alternative he points to is precisely the opposite of a top-down, heroic one-person creation. And the fact that it both appeals and applies across international borders is what makes it so much of a vision for the future, not—as some would have it—a relic of the past. It is, in a profound sense, precisely the same vision that drove the Arab Spring, along with similar movements in Spain, Greece and elsewhere. Once again, America has the opportunity to decide what side of world history it will be on. Will we cling to the lie that we have no alternative? Or will we commit ourselves to another historic equalizing advance?

[NewImproved Deal]

7. What President Carter Said...

[link:|

[dreamnightwind]

10. Though I agree with the sentiment, ...

How much has Bernie earned now? It's got to be up in that range.

What we found out is that is isn't just coming up with a good candidate and enough money that is the obstacle, it is the entire party establishment (not to mention the train-wreck party on the right), their owners, and the corporate media that manufactures political consensus rather than just reporting on it.

Media is diversifying because of social media, and the lid isn't staying on the pressure cooker as well as the oligarchs like it to, feels like a genuine class war is looming. It will be fought with ideas and networks, if we're lucky.

[Octafish]

8. Walmart doesn't do Unions.

Organized labor costs too much.

[Dem2]

9. Blah blah blah